A Mother's Love
by Marwolv
Summary: Pregame. The 5th year of the Dragon Age, Redcliffe Castle.


I had intended for my first DAO fanfic to be a Cousland/Alistair pairing, but this one kind of crawled out of my daydreams and throttled me, so I wrote it. A gabillion thanks to Speakfire , for being Pretty Much Indispensable.

***

It seemed like _everyone_ in the castle was falling to the flu. It wasn't anything fatal, thank the Maker, but it put one flat on one's back for three days, and was virulent enough that the chamber staff was having to borrow servants from the kitchens.

Not that turning ticking and changing linens was outside of Nan's abilities, it simply made for a very, very long day. She had been lucky to get her bout with it out of the way early, and despite lingering nausea and wooziness she was enough on her feet that she found herself borrowed from the kitchens quite often. Today, she'd be running from daybreak to lights-doused to help keep Redcliffe Castle running, alongside whatever hands were able.

At least she got to spend the afternoon with Gracie.

Together they flicked an embroidered sheet up and snapped it taut, folding and tucking with precise, practiced motions that no longer took any thought, and grabbed the next folded cloth from the basket. Nannie snorted the first time she saw Grace take a cheesecloth wrapped sprig of lavender from her apron pocket and slip it into a pillows case, but Grace looked at her with brown eyes earnest and lips pursed in her own style of stubborn.

"Did you waste one candle or two making those?" Nan asked , but she was smiling when she shook her head. "No, no...I'm sure you got a page or six to help you with them in their dinner hour."

"They _smell_ good." Grace tucked a red-gold curl primly behind an ear. "And they....Mother Hannah says lavender soothes the spirit. And sweet Andraste knows it helps Goldanna sleep."

Nan made a pfft sound. "'Mother' Hannah isn't any older than I am."

"See? She's very wise. Don't be bitter because you've practically the same name, _Hannelore. _No one will mistake you for the head of the Chanty."

She rolled her eyes. "Don't call me that. Hannah was the Arl's Chanter during the war, is all. Not that she doesn't deserve the post, mind, but there's politics."

Grace grabbed the basket and they moved to the next room. "Nannie, she's very good."

"I never said any different. Still. She recites the Chant, she didn't _write _it. You don't have to take every word out of her mouth like it's directly from the Prophet."

"_Nannie!_"

The taller woman grinned at her scandalized friend. "I'm sure there's plenty better. Is she better than _you_, Sunshine? Somehow I doubt it."

Grace closed her mouth with an audible click and to Nan's curiosity, a slow blush spread high and bright on her cheeks. "When is Jack home again?"

The transition blanked her mind momentarily. "H-he..." Last week. Supposedly. He should have been home five days before, and only the constant work kept her from wearing the ramparts smooth. "It's his...it's his last mission. The lord's promised him a place in the guard. He's always been so tetchy about leaving the army; you know that. His squad is probably sending him off in an ale-house somewhere."

Grace peered at her, a delicate crease between her eyebrows. "Nannie, he's a scout. Scouts don't get stuck in the fighting."

They had been over this before. Late homecoming after late homecoming, Grace said the same thing. Nan didn't disabuse the girl of the notion, but her mouth tasted of iron, and the scar that banded her right side burned . She reached over her shoulder to touch a dagger that wasn't there, and scratched at her back to hide it. "Not the good ones, no." she murmured. Jack was the best of them. The very best.

"There." Grace smiled and nodded perfunctorily. "And when he gets home, he'll have missed you so much that he'll pick you up and kiss you, and I'll take your duties in the kitchen--"

"Maker preserve us all."

"--for the next two days so you can make love until--"

_"Gracie!" _Now it was her turn to be scandalized. She put a hand to her heating face. Two days. Two days would be...pleasant...

The other woman laughed, and Nan snapped a linen at her. "Get on with you."

"Well, when my husband gets back I know you'll do the same." Grace shrugged, and Nan's embarrassed mirth trailed off.

"Oh?" She said cautiously, "Did Ben send a letter, then?"

"Oh, no." Blythe, unconcerned. "Not since Winterday. But he'll be back someday, and when he is I'm calling in my markers."

Nan hmmmmed neutrally at Grace's saucy wink, and steered their gossip into shallower waters. Teagan's latest antics, and wasn't that boy going to grow into a _beauty_; the hostler's poorly concealed affair with the milkmaid, the Arl's lack of a wife and sure as the King would fix that one of these days but soon (and here the she reddened again, and refused to meet Nan's eyes). On and on, retracing the lives of others, placing good natured bets and giving well intended advice to each other as proxy to those who should _really_ be hearing it.

By the end of the South wing, Nan pulled out a new story she had thought through but hadn't told yet. Grace, as always, was an audience like no other. For a woman grown and a mother, she had a child's purity of reaction. It was partly why Nan invented new stories to tell in the first place: watching her friend be transported, every emotion and hope and fear rolling over her face as clearly as clouds in the sky. She made happy endings for Grace, even with old tales that always ended tragically.

This particular yarn was light, a funny mix of learning tale and outright absurdity, and heads popped out of rooms to see what all the laughing was about. Basking in the positive reaction, Nan put the Fool of the World in an even more awkward position via a proposal of marriage to a goat, and suddenly all expression snuffed out Grace. They had stepped over the threshold into grandest of the guest suits, and a wax doll maid had replaced her companion in the room. It was so abrupt that Nan cut off mid-sentence.

"....Sunshine?"

Without responding, Grace went into the bedchamber and started about her tasks, and silence stretched out as Nan tried to figure out what on earth had just happened. The bottommost of this mound of pillows got bared lavender, its binding string tied in a bow. Grace smoothed her hand over it, down the fine silk sheets, and her face was wistful.

"I don't suppose," she mused softly, " that the King will be back for a long time."

Nan crossed her arms. "Considering that in the past five years he's been here four times, and the last visit was a month ago, it seems doubtful that he'll be back any time soon."

"Yes." This softer still, sad. She walked to the window that looked over the gardens and leaned her temple against the side sill, tracing the skin of her neck with a distracted hand before twining her fingers in her necklace.

Nan watched her for a minute, head tilted, before she ventured, "Dear heart, it's not like it is in the stories. Kings don't throw over their wives for the serving girl. Kings never even _notice_ serving girls, as much as they fawn and giggle from the hallways."

That flush again, spreading further this time. Nan was almost concerned for Grace's health.

"Oh, Nannie, I'm no mooncalf. I mean, of course I am. I know that. I _know _I'm a mooncalf, but that's not---Maric is---" she stopped, and her expression took on a strange combination of guilt and joy, "He... that is, we...Oh Nan, I just don't know how to tell you this..." Maker's breath, could the girl's cheeks get any redder?

And then, between the babbling and the blushes something clicked into place, and Nan wasn't sure whether she felt more horrified, or more foolish.

"Holy Lady, Bride of the Maker. _Grace._"

"I wanted to tell you, Nannie, really I did. But...Maric..."

Nan sank onto the bed's staircase and pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes. The Arl would have kittens. Unless the Arl knew. _Did_ the Arl know? Anger followed swiftly, and she breathed long, slow breaths against the rage that kicked at her ribs. One didn't exactly say no to a king. It was certainly no fault of Grace's. The king should know better than to seduce maids in other people's castles. Unless this was a common thing. Four visits in five years, and how many visits to OTHER castles? Maker above, the poor Queen. And Grace, with little Goldanna at home and her love of happy endings and this secret to burn in her for an entire month.

Grace, who was turned to her, waiting for her reaction in stoic silence.

Nan cleared her throat. "Did he--"she swallowed, "did he give you a choice?"

Her friend looked at her, puzzled. "A choice? Nannie, he was a perfect gentleman."

"He shouldn't have—you had no recourse but to---of _course _you would---but---I---I'll go to the Arl. I don't know what recompense we can hold him to, or if he can be held to any law, but by all that is holy---"

"_Hannelore_." This spoken directly into her face.

"Don't call me that." she said reflexively, and then she ducked her head and said nothing.

Grace took both of Nan's hands in hers, and knelt at the foot of the small staircase so that the two women could look eye to eye. "Nan," Slowly, clearly. "It was my idea. We...talked the first night, and the second. The third night, when I offered, he told me that he wouldn't take advantage of me, and I _dropped my dress_, Nan. It was my idea. The next night, it was my idea. And the night after that." A small smile played on her lips, "Of course, that last night was all him."

There was a very, very long silence, and then in a slightly tremulous voice Nan managed, "Is it-- is it _different_? With a king?"

Grace laughed, and Nan felt oddly like she was being spoken to by an older sister, rather than a friend ten years her junior. "He seemed like a man, to me."

Nan squeezed the hands in hers and moved her forehead to rest gently on Grace's. "Oh please. Don't give me that; you spent a week in the king's bed, and you expect me to go away happy with 'He's just a man'?"

"Well, he...I don't quite know how to explain him. Boyish, perhaps? At times. Mostly, though, his Majesty....Maric...."

"Oh _ho, _his Majesty Maric, is it?"

"Maric is...he's very beautiful. Beautiful, and so...so very sad. I think his Majesty is the loneliest man I've ever met."

Nan sighed deeply, and took her hands back to rub at a headache that had sprouted behind her eyes. "Told you he was lonely, did he?"

"Not—not in so many words, no..."

"Did he say that his _wife_ the _queen _doesn't understand him? Andraste, Gracie....what were you thinking?"

"I guess...I guess I wasn't."

She sounded forlorn enough that Nan felt like a bully."Don't mind me, Sunshine. I'm a thirty-four year old fuddy dud. You had an adventure, and good for you; there's no harm done by it. And you not even in the family way. Alls well that ends---"

But Grace's countenance was fracturing, scrunched against tears, and she took her apron and pressed it over her face with both hands. Of course. Oh, the Arl most certainly was going to have kittens. Nan wearily put an arm around her friend and pulled her into a hug.

"How long since you missed your courses?" she asked, very, very gently.

"O-over a m-m-month." Grace's reply was muffled behind the striped blue and white gingham. "S-six weeks since yesterday."

"Are you _sure_?" Six weeks without bleeding wasn't such a very long time. Nan sometimes went as longer, but her body always stopped when Jack was away. There had been ten weeks a few years back, when Nan had gone so far as to have Jack's old cradle brought down from its storage place, carefully wrapped against weather and vermin. Jack's squad had been clearing a particularly nasty bandit problem in the South, and he had been almost three weeks late to come home with no word. She had started flowing as soon as he had kissed her, and it had been strange to be so relieved and so disappointed at the same time. The cradle had been put back, and had stayed there.

Perhaps the girl was overwrought?

But then, Grace's rhythms were as constant as the sun, and she was nodding into her apron as she leaned against Nan's chest and her weeping increased markedly.  
"Okay." Nan said, "Okay. We'll take you to a midwife. But Gracie, if you are with child, it's--- This is a good thing, right? A baby. That's wonderful. Old Marme can watch Goldanna for longer stretches, of course. I'll talk to Jack and we can take her when our duties are timed properly. A baby is a _good_ thing."

When Grace calmed, they gathered the basket, and headed down the winding servants stair, discreetly hidden behind the hunting tapestry in the guest suit's dining room.

"You're not angry?"

"Angry? Why on earth would I be angry, Gracie?"

A miserable shrug. "You and Jack...you gave up after last year. I remember, you got drunk."

"Grace, I--" _was_ she resentful? She couldn't rightly say. "The Maker didn't see fit to give us children. That's between me, Jack, and the Maker. If you're to have a baby, then this child of yours is a blessing and a joy and I won't let you make yourself feel guilty because you've decided that you skipped over my _turn._ Pregnancy is not a swing." She was rewarded with a watery giggle.

"I think," Grace said slowly, "that I should tell him."

"And why is it his business, anyway?"Nan snapped irritably, then added a grudging, "No; no of course you're right. Talk to the midwife first to be sure, but I suppose you'll have to tell him. Which means you'll have to tell the Arl, you know."

Grace visibly paled. "Will you come with me?"

They were at the bottom of the East servant's stair, and the noise from the kitchen was deafening; it was not a three-in-the-afternoon sound, and giving Grace's arm a squeeze of affirmation, Nan shouldered through the entrance and into the bustle.

Cook looked up from bullying one of the younger elves, wielding a wooden spoon with ferocity and with her guard captain's face firmly in place. "_There _you are!" For a woman of advanced age, Cook could most certainly bellow. "Soldiers'll be here any minute, and by the looks of 'em they'll be hungr----"

Nan dropped her share of the dirty laundry and bolted for outside door.

Five weeks, and it felt like a lifetime. He was five days overdue, but he'd been later before, on other missions, and as long as he hugged her until her ribs creaked and kissed her dizzy she could forgive him. Nan stripped off her apron and stashed it in a convenient barrel, still running. Enough soldiers to put Cook in a tizzy! They must be planning his sendoff at Redcliffe Tavern, then. She was glad...she'd marched with many of the soldiers in his unit herself, and it would be good to see them all again. Rounding the turn before the windmill she patted her flyaway hair back into its bun, and did her best to pinch some color into her cheeks. Best of all, after a few rounds in their honor and a rough morning all the soldiers would go back to their posts or their homes and would leave her with her Jack to some well earned peace and...

It had to be most of the company. She could see at least fifty men, moving slowly, some of them injured. She stuttered to a stop at the crest of the hill, looking down at them, searching each figure for that familiar set of shoulders and armor she herself had patched.

There was a packhorse toward the front of the group. Owen the smith's son was leading it, and when he saw her looking at him his eyes glanced back guiltily to the the animal's burden.

There was a body slung over the horse's withers. It was bundled and bound and unrecognizable, except for one bared foot, and that was enough.


End file.
